Marwan al-Shehhi

Marwan al-Shehhi (9 May 1978-11 September 2001) was an al-Qaeda member from the United Arab Emirates. al-Shehhi was the leader of the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 175 on 11 September 2001, and the plane was crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Biography
Marwan al-Shehhi was born on 9 May 1978 in Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates, the son of a Muslim cleric. al-Shehhi was a quiet and devout Muslim, and he joined the Emirati Army in 1995 upon graduating high school. He received a military scholarship, using it to get an education in Germany; he moved into Hamburg in April 1996 and boarded with a local family. al-Shehhi was a very religious but friendly individual who frequently rented cars for trips to Berlin, France, and the Netherlands, and he wore western clothes. When he left Germany in April 1997 due to a problem at home, he was kicked out of the University of Bonn; he instead headed to the Technical University of Hamburg. He was told to finish his semester of studies at Bonn, and he did not enroll there until January 1999; in July 1999, he returned to Hamburg to study shipbuilding.

Training for 9/11
Around this time, he helped in founding the Hamburg cell of al-Qaeda alongside Mohamed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and they met to discuss anti-American feelings and possible attacks four times a week. He and Atta never laughed, saying that they could not laugh while people died in Palestine, and in late 1999 al-Shehhi, Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Said Bahaji, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh made preparations to head to Chechnya to fight in the Second Chechen War against Russia. However, Khaled al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Slahi convinced them to travel to Afghanistan instead, and they met Osama bin Laden. They trained for terrorist attacks there, and he returned to Germany in March 2000, shaving his beard to hide his radicalism and to make him seem less religious. However, German flight schools did not help the hijackers, and they headed to America instead. On 29 May 2000, he was the first al-Qaeda hijacker to arrive in America, landing at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. He practiced flying at Oka-Lopa Airport and also made use of flight simulators, and he was one of the hijackers that stayed in Virginia for a while before returning to Florida. He attended the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, and he met with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical imam who helped the hijackers. On 26 August 2001, he stayed at the Panther Motel in Deerfield, Florida, but on 28 August he bought a ticket for United Airlines Flight 175. On 8 September, he attended Shuckum's Oyster Pub and Seafood Grill with Atta and some other hijackers, and he drank rum and coke (against Islamic law) while talking with the others.

Suicide mission
On 9 September 2001, al-Shehhi flew to Boston, sharing a room at the Milner Hotel with Fayez Banihammad, Mohand al-Shehri, and Satam al-Suqami. At 6:52 AM on 11 September 2001, al-Shehhi called Mohamed Atta at Logan International Airport before boarding the plane at 7:27 AM, and from 8:42 AM to 8:46 AM the plane was hijacked. The plane narrowly avoided a mid-air collision with another plane, and the passengers were even more on edge when they found out about the fate of American Airlines Flight 11, which had crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower. At 9:03 AM, al-Shehhi flew Flight 175 into the South Tower, flying the plane lower and faster than Atta had done with Flight 11. This led to the South Tower collapsing before the North Tower, and al-Shehhi's suicide was seen across the world, having been filmed from numerous vantage points.